AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I frowned. This was news to me. I hadn't been able to attend the event––a case of mine had gone to trial the following day, and I was stuck at the office. By the time I had gotten home, Brandon had been asleep, and as usual, he'd gotten up for his workout the next morning before I was awake.
"What happened?" I asked as I accepted a glass of whiskey from Jane.
"Does it matter?"
"Well, I think it might," Pushpa said in a much more measured tone of voice. "Maybe something happened that really upset the team. The truth is, we really don't know."
"Let's not defend that horse's ass, Push," Kieran said. "I've never seen him do anything but order Brandon––his boss––around like a little kid."
"Sort of like you do?" Pushpa chided.
From her perch on a kitchen stool, Jane snorted. I glanced at her, but she held up her hands.
"Hey, don't look at me. Cory didn't act like any more or less of a total asshole from the other times I’ve met him."
I looked back at Kieran. "What exactly did he say?"
Kieran glanced at Jane and Pushpa. "I'm terrible at impressions. Who wants to do the honors?"
Pushpa just snickered into her drink, but Jane got up and started pacing the room, shoving her hands deep into her pockets over and over again in the exact way Cory tended to do.
"What the fuck, man?" she jeered in an excellent imitation of Cory's slight New England cadence. "It should have been cake, man, but you fucked it up, just like you've been doing all the time, recently. You're even more of a fuckin' moron than I am, and that's really saying somethin'. But I know fuckin' morons, and you, man, are the biggest fuckin' moron of them all!"
It was a good enough impression, italics and all, that Pushpa was bent over laughing silently in her chair when Jane finished, and even Kieran was smiling into her drink. But as much as I also liked the impression, something stuck out.
"Did he really say all that, or were you just making it up?" I asked, thinking about the part where fake-Cory said Brandon was screwing up regularly, not just once.
"I added a bit, but the beginning was pretty much what he said. It sounds like he's been riding Brandon a lot these days, huh?" Jane hopped back onto her stool.
I frowned. I personally couldn't stand Cory––it was a big reason why I tended not to attend campaign events unless I absolutely had to. The guy was an asshole, and I frequently wondered if he exacerbated some of the issues Brandon had been having. But every time I brought it up, I was told in no uncertain terms that he was essential to the campaign.
"Brandon says he's the best," I said with a shrug. "And he is dedicated to his job––I'll give him that. It's just that he doesn't have a lot of patience with the other elements of Brandon's life. He wasn't too happy when the press caught wind of the trial, and he's even more pissed that we are taking the next week to go back down for the verdict."
"Gimme a break, Sky. Since when are you so forgiving of assholes?" Jane put in while Pushpa and Kieran just sent skeptical looks over their drinks. "You smacked Brandon for giving you too many gifts, and now you're letting this shithead walk all over him? No wonder Brandon's feeling the pressure."
I rubbed my arm, but didn't meet my friend's acute gaze. Jane pulled her glasses down and stared at me over the thick, tortoise-shell rims.
"What!" I cried finally. "Brandon's a big boy, and I'm not his mother, for Christ's sake. He doesn't want to stop the campaign, and he wants to keep working with Cory. What am I supposed to do?"
"Would he be okay with your boss talking to you like an idiot? If I know Brandon, he'd probably want to deck him?"
I glanced at Kieran with a smile. "I doubt it. She talks the same way to him."
"Not the same, and you know it," Kieran said shortly. "Brandon's basically my brother. I'm the only one allowed to talk to him like that. Period."
Pushpa smiled and rubbed her wife's shoulder. Surprisingly, Kieran softened slightly under her touch.
The sound of muffled shouts filtered down the hallway, and I cringed. I couldn't make out the words, but Jane was right––the way Brandon's campaign manager shouted at him amounted to verbal abuse. And for all of Brandon's veneer of confidence, all the people in this room knew the truth: that underneath it all, he was still very much a man who craved the approval of those he cared about. And he wouldn't have hired Cory if, on some level, he didn't care what he thought.
I pressed my head in my hands and groaned. Some Thanksgiving. Down the hall, a door slammed.
"And if that speech isn't fuckin' tattooed in your brain by the time you're back next week, I fuckin' quit!" Cory's voice shouted. "I've had it with this amateur bullshit!"
A few seconds later, Cory came storming out, with Hope on his heels. He gave all of us a black look, landing on me for a split-second longer.
"Thanks for dinner," he spat, sounding anything but grateful.
Without waiting for a reply, he slammed out of the house. Hope mumbled her thanks in an apologetic tone, and followed him.
